Sir Peter Job, chairman of Shell's remuneration committee and City grandee, should know the drill. When the majority of voting shareholders in a major FTSE 100 company give a thumbs-down to the report on directors' remuneration, vague words from the non-executives about "reflecting carefully" only buy a little time. After a while, action is expected, which usually means a resignation.

That's what happened in 2003 at GlaxoSmithKline in the big protest over Jean-Pierre Garnier's potential payoff. A fortnight after 51% of shareholders voted against the remuneration report, Paul Allaire, chairman of the remuneration committee, was out. Keith Butler-Wheelhouse didn't last much longer at Sainsbury's after the protest against Sir Peter Davis's payoff in 2004. In Sainsbury's case, a U-turn by family shareholders spared the board the humiliation of defeat on the day, but Butler-Wheelhouse was toast anyway.

A fortnight after Shell's defeat, it's worth asking: what is Job waiting for? If he's hoping that shareholders' anger will abate, he will be disappointed. Fund managers remember how he referred to the bonus issue as "an irritant" and they are determined to be irritating.

More likely, Job fails to appreciate why investors are angry. Let's spell it out: Shell paid £3.6m in bonuses to directors even though performance targets were missed – the firm finished fourth, rather than third or better, in a league table of big oil companies ranked by shareholder returns. Yes, the small print allowed the remuneration committee to use discretion but the 60% vote against its report shows that shareholders think the right was abused.

Job plans meetings with shareholders in autumn, suggesting he thinks he can survive that long. Maybe he can but humiliation looks inevitable if he's still clinging on at next year's annual meeting. A prompt resignation would surely be more dignified.

Sheikh-out at bank

You never know what's coming next at Barclays. Nor, in the case of Sheikh Mansour's decision to sell the equivalent of 1.3bn shares, did Barclays' own management. Six months ago chief executive John Varley was hailing him as "an anchor investor". Much guff about strategic relationships was spouted. Now there's a tidy profit to take, the Abu Dhabi investor has upped anchor.

Why did Mansour do it? The natural reading seems correct: when you're staring at a mega-loss, as the sheikh was in mid-January when Barclays' shares fell to 50p, it takes a very brave punter to pass up the opportunity a few months later to bank a £1.4bn profit.

Put another way, Mansour got lucky. He knew last October that it was a high-risk bet but he could not have known quite how risky. He could not have suspected that the UK government, having just conducted one set of stress tests on the banks, would demand another in January.

Even if he did have an inkling, he could not have known that the Financial Services Authority would define stress in a way that allowed Barclays to emerge with a pass.

The sheikh is a rich man but he will have been shaken. In the circumstances, stepping off the rollercoaster is understandable. Note that having "no current intention" to offload the remaining warrants commits the sheikh to nothing beyond a day.

Barclays will feel snubbed. Actually, it should be grateful. The "strategic relationship" stuff was always flimsy and, sooner or later, UK shareholders were bound to worry that the bank was getting too chummy with its Middle Eastern friends.

So a step back towards a "normal" share register is welcome, which is perhaps one reason why the share price didn't fall further yesterday. After all, if, like Barclays, you're dead-set against UK government involvement, it's very odd to pretend that hawking large stakes to foreign governments is anything other than an emergency measure. If Barclays can now persuade the state-owned China Development Bank (shareholding: a mere 2%) to relinquish its right to a seat on board, we might say it's making progress.

Down the tube

Ryanair reported its first loss in 20 years yesterday as it took a €220m hit against its holding in Aer Lingus, the legacy of a takeover attempt that looked doomed to fail. Could this embarrassing waste of shareholders' resources be connected to chief executive Michael O'Leary's eagerness yesterday to talk about something else – like charging passengers to use the toilet? Believe the toilet tax when, or if, it happens. It still looks like a brilliant wind-up.